As more and more students descend upon campus every year, classes expand, hallways crowd, and most notably, lunches have been amplified now serving more students than any year previous.
Cafeteria Manager Judy Nelson says, “We feed around 1750 kids every day.”
Catering to over half of the student population divided into 3 lunches can sometimes appear to be a challenge as vast lunch lines protrude out doorways. Nevertheless, the average student still has at least 15 minutes to eat despite what seems to be an eternal waiting period. Although, what would a rapidly growing school do to avoid crowds if the time came?
“Adding more outside karts would be a possible solution if we ever got to that point,” said Assistant Principal, Heather Patterson. “We haven’t crossed that bridge yet, even on days like yesterday where there were pretty long lines.”
As for the possibility of there ever being an off- campus or D lunch in the near future, both options seem to be non- existent choices.
“As of right now, a D- lunch is not in the schedule,” says Patterson. “We have to make sure there are so many instructional minutes and adding on another 30 minutes would take away from instruction somewhere so we would have to make that time up somehow.”
Besides enlarged lines, space comes off limited as well. For example, due to seasonal weather changes, more students have migrated from dining outside to eating inside the warm lunchroom, causing a battle for seating areas.
Patterson says, “If we ever got to that point where we didn’t have enough chairs, we would order more. Every single has a capacity, so if every single student wanted to sit inside we’d have to make sure it isn’t reached, so I think we’re right at capacity with chairs.”
All in all, even though our population flourishes as the years go on, we’re not even close to having to whip out crowd control. Basha high school manages with 2320 students, Hamilton manages with over 3000 students, so Perry is a long ways away from ever being swarmed and forced to adjust our current agenda.